Perspective

Where you stand makes a difference. If you stand too close to someone when you talk, they back up. Their personal space was invaded. But you can see someone better from close up, right? So you want to be fairly close when you're talking, especially if you don't want to be overheard or if you're in a noisy environment and want to hear better too.

The same is not true of perspective. Being too close skews everything, distorts everything. You can't see the "big picture" if you're too close to the Person. Event. Issue.

It's been over four months since Tim died, and my perspective has changed. A little distance from the event has done that. Sharpened it, actually. Increased my focus on some aspects of the person, the event, and the issue - life. Past, present and future, the ongoing NOW life of Tim that stitches them all together in one fabric. The NOW life of me myself.

A couple of times during these months as I have talked to the Lord and to Tim, I searched through photos of Tim and picked several to keep on hand in the kitchen and office. It's easier to talk to Tim when I'm looking at a photo and visualizing his face. And I came to realize just how physically tired and ill Tim was last December.
When I asked the Lord what Tim looks like in heaven, he directed me to a couple of photos from the 1980's. One was our wedding picture. One I pulled out yesterday was taken in the parking lot at Creekside, where Tim is leaning against his Cutless Supreme and smiling as he looks directly at me holding the camera. Except that he has more hair now, this is pretty much what he looks like.

Comparing that photo with the last December photo, it's easy to tell how tired Tim had become. He's not tired now, though - he's full of energy and enthusiasm, interest and excitement. He tries to stir up more of those attributes in me these days, get me out of my physical, emotional and spiritual lethargy in the mornings. "Up and at 'em!" I'm not a morning person but I'm trying.

My perspective on our NOW life together is gradually changing, and I'm having fewer lonely, self-pitying afternoons. Less intense ones. I find reasons to do something, go somewhere outside of the condo in those times. Sometimes I save up errands so I can do them later in the day, the worst time of day for me. And then I ask Tim to go with me when I leave the house.

As I drive down roads and streets and walk around in stores, I look at these places as he is looking at them. Some of these he had never seen before and my descriptions of them in the past had been very skimpy. It's hard for me to try to describe something "on the fly" as we drive or walk pass. Now Tim is seeing for himself those streets and stores and commenting on them. Pretty. Crowded. Junky. Busy. Interesting. Expensive. Hmmmm. Now I understand, he says.

Then as Tim describes his present-day life and activities to me I try to visualize his environment as he is looking at it, and my perspective of life and eternity changes too. From time to time the Lord gives me a glimpse of what is ahead for Tim, for me, and for the world. He enlivens my perspective! He expands, widens, broadens, deepens it, yet focuses and clarifies it, like letting me examine a wide-angle high resolution photograph with a magnifying glass.

Keep things in perspective, people say. They usually mean don't go overboard, don't take things too seriously, don't be a fanatic. My changing perspective might require some or all of those, considering what lies ahead.

Colors of spring, colors of life

This week I've wandered through three stores looking at pot plants, thinking I would put a planter box on the cement pad outside my side door -- that's the door I use these days, the one in Tim's office. There's a plastic chair and a garden statue of the child St. Francis (a Christmas gift) there now, but I'd like to replace them with something bright and cheerful, a planter box full of colorful spring, summer and fall blossoms. Colors Tim would like.

I asked Ora Lee one day what Tim's favorite colors were growing up. I always picked out colors of shirts for him according to my tastes, blue, red and white, or maroon mostly. But as I thought back to the clothes he owned when we first met, I thought he probably had preferred yellows, tans and greens. Sure enough, that's what she said. In fact, he owned a bright lemon yellow sports coat and a pair of grass green slacks one time. We finally gave them away several years ago because he'd outgrown them.

So I planned to look for bright yellow plants and a heavy (too heavy to steal) rectangular planter for them. I first went to Forest Lake Greenhouses and slowly walked around, admiring all the red begonias and pastel petunias. They had a few yellow chrysanthemum type flowers in small containers but nothing struck my fancy. Their only oblong planters were plastic and lightweight, too easy for someone to pick up and carry away. Most were round and most were plastic. I decided to keep looking.

Later in the afternoon I drove over to Lowe's, parked near the garden shop and perused their selections. Skimpy. They had less yellow offerings than Forest Lake. Yesterday I made my way out to the new Home Depot. The few other shoppers seemed just as disappointed as I was, frowning as they looked around. Aisles and aisles of sameness, shelves and shelves of more sameness. The only thing that drew my attention was outside, a display of two-toned yellow petunias, something I'd never seen before. If I had been able to find the planter I had in mind, I might have purchased some of those but their planters were plastic, too. Most were round, too.

Again I came home without a flower or a pot to put it in. As I pushed open the door and stepped into the house, I could clearly hear Tim speak to me.

"You're the one who's going to look at them," he said, "why don't you get a color you like? They have lots of those. And it doesn't matter if the pot is plastic or plaster, round or square, just get something you'll like seeing whenever you come and go. Since you use this door all the time now, you'll see it every day and you'll remember to water it."

He was reminding me of the plants I've put at that door in the past, how they usually died from lack of attention. Lack of water. He reminded me that he has plenty of other flowers to look at where he is; he won't care one way or the other whether the ones I put there to look at are yellow or zebra-striped.

Okay, since he put it like that, maybe I'll go back over to Forest Lake and take another look. I will ask somebody to help me pick a hardy outdoor plant that can survive through the summer.

One day this week I wondered what Tim was doing, and he said he was taking a few minutes to simply enjoy heaven's beautiful colors. I tried to imagine what that was like but it's impossible to do. We take colors for granted, shades of blues and greens in sky and ocean, reds and golds in trees and flowers. But in heaven there are colors we've never seen on earth!

For so many years Tim was blind. Now he can see colors! And far more colors than I see, some that don't even have names, nothing I can use to compare them to something I'm familiar with. What an interesting, exciting, wonderful way to spend a few minutes. I'll think about that when I go back to find a flower pot for the door.

Some folks don't want to understand, I think

I got another phone call this afternoon wanting to know how I'm doing, a gentleman with a very sympathetic tone to his voice expecting to hear me respond with self-pity, I'm sure. He seemed disappointed when I didn't. When I tell some people that I'm really doing fine, they seem puzzled and even annoyed. They seem to think I am not missing Tim as much as I should, I'm not as sad as I should be, not the loving spouse/widow I should be. They don't get it. And I don't like having to try to explain and listen to their doubtful expressions in reply.

Tim's physical body is gone, but he's not gone. He's not dead in the true sense of the word, he's more alive than I am. He can go more places, see more things, do more activities, and understand far more than any still-on-the-earth-in-this-life Christian can possibly understand.

I certainly do miss Tim's physical presence with me, but I am really doing fine most of the time. Late afternoons and evenings are the worst times of the day for me, when the aloneness seems to be stronger. That's when I talk to the Lord about it, talk to Tim about it, and it's much better.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and almost got through the trip without thinking about all the stuff I no longer buy. I did point out to Tim that my tastes in breakfast food have changed, that I mostly eat cereal these days, not much in the way of bagels and cream cheese. He seemed to be telling me that I needed some variety, so I went ahead and bought some of those. We'll see how long it takes me to eat them... I didn't see anyone I knew and I was grateful for that.

I did skip the Powers family reunion, though. I left church after Sunday School with intentions of picking up some Kentucky Fried Chicken and heading to the reunion, but the more I thought about it the less inclined I was to go. I realized that Uncles Charlie, Mike and Palmer and families were going to be there and I would have liked to see them, but I just couldn't do it.

So I just came home, cooked myself a pot of chili, ate lunch, watched some TV, worked on emails, did some blogging, and read a lot. I don't know if we had the small group last night but yesterday was very stormy and I had no inclination to drive in a lot of wind, so I didn't.

I find myself not wanting to do much when the weather is bad, just hibernate with a book and an old television movie or something. The clouds are mostly gone today but it's still pretty windy and the windows rattle with it. So I haven't done much today either, just a little work on a client's typing, a little email, a little blogging, a little reading, a little news on TV...

I'm glad I know Tim is having a blast, learning, doing, anticipating. Knowing about all that is the reason I can truthfully say I'm doing fine, most of the time.

Day of Resurrection

There are a lot of people in heaven who have already been resurrected from the dead... that is, they already have a new physical body combined with their spiritual body. Enoch walked with God and was not, the Bible says. I take that to mean he was taken bodily into heaven without having to die and be resurrected first. Somebody must have been there to record that, else why would it be worded that way?

So was Elijah. And we know Elisha saw him as he left, being escorted in a grand fashion. Then, in the book of Matthew we read about the many, many saints who were raised from the dead along with Jesus, and who were seen by a lot of people in Jerusalem and no doubt other places before they went along with Jesus on into heaven. I believe these were the saints who believed in advance in the Messiah who was to come. The cream of the crop of the Old Testament, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, the prophets, and quite probably John the Baptist.

So, there are quite a number of people in heaven who already have a physical body. Wonder how their abilities, their activities, their assignments differ from those who only have spiritual bodies and no flesh?

Questions like these come up regularly in my conversations with Tim and the Lord in the last several months. I do receive answers to my questions, but those are recorded in a quite private place for the most part.

But about those believers in heaven who have physical bodies already... sometimes you read about "angel" appearances on earth, bringing warnings or encouragement or instruction or assistance in some form. Because they appear and disappear, they are believed to be angels and not humans. But Jesus appeared and disappeared at will, after his resurrection. These appearances may just be incognito earth-assignments for David, or Abraham, or Daniel. Who would recognize them these days? Of course, they may also be angels.

Sometimes I am envious of all the exciting, interesting, challenging, wonderful activities Tim is involved in now, but the Lord reminds me that patience is a virtue and reassures me that my future assignments here on earth will blessed, interesting, challenging, and are necessary.